Coping Mechanisms
by dimension7
Summary: After Tokyo Babylon and before X, creepy Seishirou, self-flagellant Subaru.  Promiscuity, depression, and o.c.s.


Disclaimer: No own-ie. Don't sue-ie.

Warnings: Subaru copes with his loss and sadness as a slut, with a predilection for strange older men.

When I came back to myself I was tightly holding my ankles behind my head, and staring up at some stranger's face as he huffed and puffed and pounded into me, a thread of saliva trailed from his mouth… and then splattered against my cheek. I was disgusted, and not just by the spit. This had happened several times now, and I knew that when he was done, after he'd ground against me hard enough, and cracked my broken heart some more, he'd pull away, mutter clumsy meaningless words, and vanish from my life.

I arched against him, wanting it deeper.

"fuck me fill me kill me," I moaned against him, uncaring that he heard-I'd never see him again anyways.

He never looked at my face, not once, but he gripped me tighter and harder, then flipped me onto my stomach. God, it felt terrible, I loved it so much. He bit the nape of my neck, and I screamed for him… for _him_. Then he was done, a disheveled and wilting lump collapsed upon me, breathing on my throat, making me sick.

I've been trying to stain Seishirou's scars, to make them go away. Each one night stand, each pill, each shot, I'm just trying to wipe out the pain.

The man's gone before either of us can pretend interested in exchanging numbers, and I'm unsure if we even exchanged names. All I know is that the pain is still there, that the pain… the agony of my emptiness is my only companion.

Numbly, I stripped the bed of all its divestments and remade it. I stood in my room for awhile, I'm not sure how long because I was gone again, and when I came back I was cold and my hands and feet were blue.

I took a shower.

As red and angry as the day he'd given them to me, Seishirou's scars snaked my skin. I looked less and less like Hokuto by the day, and I felt less and less like myself.

I could only imagine what Hokuto would say about my newest hobby of picking up older men and being their fuck-doll for a few hours. She'd insist upon my personal value, then bring up the importance of my role to our family. Last but not least, she'd be appalled by me not "saving myself for my one true love".

It doesn't matter. Hokuto is dead.

Dead

dead

dead

Damnit. Blood and glass was in the sink and on the counter-my hand flayed open freshly-I cherished the pain.

I believe in pain. I don't believe that I have a "one true love" or even a "one love" or even "love". These are things that are not for my life, not for me. There's nothing to love, no one to love me. Nobody could.

Hokuto is dead because of me.

Grandmother is in a wheelchair because of me.

Seishirou left me.

It's hard to remember why I came back to myself sometimes, it's hard to want to live, hard to have a wish. Hard to make Seishirou look at me.

Picking up the glass fragments I cut my fingertips, and, as always, the splattering of tears surprised me. I don't know how, but my capacity to cry is endless, unquenchable geysers behind my eyes.

After I finally got the mirror shards picked up (my face reflected in blood, green and red and black and ohmygod it's happened again it's happened again IT'S HAPPENED AGAIN!) I bandaged my fingertips, savored the sting of antiseptic, and began rummaging for a smoke…

With some disappointment I realized my tryst had pocketed my cigarettes, and though some men had stolen more from me in the past, at that moment it was enough to irritate me into ripping my hair out.

I glanced at my clock-3:08 a.m.- and pulled my coat on. As a nervous habit, I again grasped for a smoke, knowing I had none, knowing that was what I was going out for. I sighed deeply, I was too tired for this.

It was warm outside, with a light drizzle. I didn't worry about the rain, there was a cigarette vending machine a little over a block from my apartment and I knew from experience it should take no longer than 23 minutes all told. Without looking up a single time, my feet led me there, and my fingers fumbled with the buttons, and with a little _thud_ my cigarettes were within grasp.

I stooped to pick up my much sought after pack of smokes, and froze in utter terror.

I caught Seishirou's reflection in the glass of the vending machine just before he slammed me into it, his body pressed so close to mine, his breath hot against my throat, his smell of coffee and cigarettes and soap and blood and sugar choking my senses, and he's _grinding into me, fingers caressing the backs of my hands, engulfing all my nerves in raw liquid fire only the Sakurazukamori and his cursed cherry blossoms can make me feel. _

_I writhe in agonized ecstasy, I want this so much and I hate myself for it. _

"_Even though you're nothing but a broken toy Subaru, you're still only mine to play with." I knew that Seishirou was smirking as he said it, as he ripped my arms up behind my back, rewarded by snapping and ripping inside, as he bit the back of my throat and groped me through my pants. _

_I knew he was smirking when he vanished, combusting into a cloud of goddamn cherry blossoms, disappearing from me again._

_It wasn't fair._

_Seishirou never was._


End file.
